Primary Takeaways: Clinton Coalition Never Cracked, and Trump Turns to the Fall

Hillary Clinton claimed the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday and appealed to the country to reject Donald J. Trump, as a candidate unfit for the presidency.

Mrs. Clinton finished strong in her longer-than-expected primary battle with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, capturing California, according to The Associated Press, and three other states. Mr. Trump did not wait for her to declare victory, lacing into Mrs. Clinton from a golf course he owns in Westchester, and promising to give a speech thoroughly assailing her next week.

But even as the Clinton-Trump battle lines were coming into focus, Mr. Sanders announced from California that he was not prepared to stand down, a potentially irksome development for Mrs. Clinton.

Some of the biggest things we learned on Tuesday:

Clinton’s coalition never cracked

The final Democratic primaries shaped up much like the first round in February: as a contest between Mrs. Clinton’s coalition of women, older voters and nonwhites, and Mr. Sanders’s base of whites, rural voters and young people. That broad matchup budged only a little over the course of the race, handing Mrs. Clinton victory in all the biggest, most populous, diverse and delegate-rich states.

Mrs. Clinton’s firm base of support repelled Mr. Sanders repeatedly, in states like Illinois, New York and Ohio, and again in California and New Jersey on Tuesday night.

Mrs. Clinton will also rely on this coalition in the general election, and she indicated as much with a victory speech stressing the long fight for women’s equality in politics, and themes of inclusion and racial tolerance.

Sanders doesn’t hear the exit music

Mr. Sanders staked his fading campaign on California and trailed Mrs. Clinton there by a significant margin with more than 90 percent of the votes counted. Yet in his election night remarks, Mr. Sanders declared he would forge ahead in the Washington, D.C., primary next week, and would fight on to the convention in Philadelphia in July. While he noted that Mrs. Clinton won several states on Tuesday, he acknowledged neither the delegate barrier she had crossed nor the historic nature of her victory.

Mr. Sanders demonstrated on Tuesday night why Mrs. Clinton may want him as an ally in the fall campaign. He showed on Tuesday that he is capable of attacking Mr. Trump in stinging language, saying that the Trump campaign’s “major theme is bigotry.” But for now, Mr. Sanders appears determined to defy his adopted party and extend his run in a race that is already resolved.

“I know that the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight,” he said, “but we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate.”

Trump gave the pitch party leaders want

When Mr. Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination, party leaders expected him to turn toward the general election and campaign in more conventional terms. A month later, and for a moment, Mr. Trump did just that: Eschewing personal taunts and attacks, he defined the presidential campaign as a choice between a hard-nosed businessman and an opponent he said embodied “a rigged system.”

But if Mr. Trump’s remarks sketched out the message allies have wanted him to deliver, it is unclear whether he is capable of sticking to the pitch.

On Tuesday, he gave an interview to Fox News demanding that Republicans “get over” their concern about the attacks Mr. Trump has hurled at a federal judge of Mexican descent, just hours after releasing a statement saying he was done talking about the issue. Republican tolerance for Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior has evaporated, and one senator who backed him, Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, has already withdrawn his endorsement.

2016 is a national identity election

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump signaled in their victory speeches how they plan to campaign in the general election: not on narrow promises or practical disagreements about shared goals, but on sweeping and stark themes about the country’s basic character.

Mr. Trump pledged to be an “America first” president, a guardian of the nation’s traditional interests against foreign forces, and a warrior against “a corrupt system” in Washington. Mrs. Clinton vowed to stand up for the United States as a “big-hearted, fair-minded country” open to immigration and diversity and, she said, under grave threat from Mr. Trump.

The election, Mrs. Clinton said, would be “about millions of Americans coming together to say: We are better than this. We won’t let this happen in America.”

Clinton wants Republican votes

The divisive nature of Mr. Trump’s candidacy has left an unlikely opening for Mrs. Clinton to win over moderate Republicans, and she hinted on Tuesday that she intended to make the most of it. Mrs. Clinton gave Sanders supporters a prominent shout-out in her speech, but in almost the same breath she asked for support from the other party.

She said she aimed to win over voters who backed “me or Senator Sanders or one of the Republicans.” In denouncing Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton highlighted his slashing primary campaign, noting that he “abused his primary opponents and their families.”

Many of the critiques Mrs. Clinton leveled against Mr. Trump were essentially nonpartisan, focused on character and his temperamental fitness for the presidency — issues raised as persistently on the right as on the left.